Monthly Archives: October 2015

I played through undertale a few days ago, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s metacritic score of 94 was completely warranted, this plain and dull looking game that I kept seeing screenshots of.

A short 5 hour playthrough later, and I was sold, it’s incredible. Probably the best game this year, probably one of the best games of all time…
Lovingly crafted and likable characters, hilarious dialogue, unexpected comical twists and turns, a battle system which is 50% puzzle and 50% shmup, and topped off by a soundtrack which is easily on par with your favourite chiptunes.

3 days on, i’m sitting in my van listening to the soundtrack and getting goosebumps, and thinking of the characters and smiling to myself.

I dont know who the hell Toby Fox is, but the man is a true wizard. I expect people in 20 years will still pick this game up and enjoy it just as much as we are today, because unlike some other games which rely on jokes, undertales humour doesn’t need to rely on pop culture references or similar external factors.

Seems like a pretty averagely bad season, in the interest of my sanity I am switching to now only watching the very first episode to judge the show’s overall quality. The last few seasons have made it pretty evident that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover anyway (see, Prison school, which turned out to arguably be the best show of last season), so I can’t imagine going from 2 episodes to 1 is going to make a significant difference.

– 8 – Semi generic fantasy show where all the humans are half animal, has catgirls so automatically above average, not too much has happened yet though so genre is up in the air for now, however apparently it’s based on an eroge so it might go harem route.

– 7 – Witch girl getting up to weird world saving stuff. not really sure what to think of it so far, there are robots, superheroes and all sorts of other oddities. The art style is nice and colourful though.

– 6 – Reminds me of a shitty laputa, Involves gemstone, sudden girlfriend appearance, and some mechs. The animation and world is pretty interesting looking though.

‘…and stay down.’ Tier

Peeping Life

K

Taimadou Gakuen 35

Lance n masques

Sakurako-san

Sakurako-san no ashimoto ni wa shitai ga umatteiru – 6 – Forensics detective and her very unlikable high school teenage sidekick, bit on the boring side but might have potential.

peeping life – 6 – Literally feels like watching anime standup comedy with 2 characters from a show appearing and doing a gag routine, all of the set ups are based on characters from very old anime series (70’s-80s) so presumedly you’ll get more out of this if you are older or have knowledge on these sort of shows (eg. Astro boy, yatterman, black jack)

Gakusen toshi asterisk – 6 – oh hey it’s the same show as ‘Rakudai kishi no cavalry’, but slightly more generic and less entertaining And I mean that pretty literally, the overall flow and layout of the episode was practically identical, except this one was more boring.

Lance n masques – 6 – Pretty similar in principle to Hayate the combat butler, generic princess character who lives alone being guarded by generic beta main character who carries around a big ol’ lance.

Taimadou Gakuen 35 shiken shoutai – 6 – Military platoon drama, but in true anime style they send magical high school students to fight instead of actual soldiers.

Heavy Object – 5 – mecha style show but replacing cool mechas with generic grey metal orbs of death. Includes pervy teenage main character and a shy girl with few emotions as a pilot, seems very mediocre so far.

Subete ga F ni naru – 4 – Gonna be honest, wasn’t really following what was happening because it was kind of boring. Some sort of detective story I think. It’s very wordy and not very flashy so far.

K return of kings – 3 – 2flashy4me, it feels like someone told the animators that people only judge the first episode of a show, and these guys put their entire budget into a nonsensical episode just full of flashy fight scenes, spinning cameras, glowing neon lights, chrome plated cars and so on, in the hope that redditors would repost the show and persude people into watching it. Granted it is by far one of the best looking shows ive ever seen, but the plot and everything else about the show just looks terrible.

High school star musical – 2 – like ‘Free!’ except with singing and dancing, it’s gaytastic in every sense. I found it pretty cringey and generally unenjoyable, but then I’m a straight male so..

Notable Sequels

To speak too much of ‘The Beginners Guide’ would be a horrible sin, personally I knew absolutely nothing of this game, I saw maybe one or two screenshots, I knew it was by the guy that made Stanley Parable, and that it was about ‘Learning about what you do not understand’

And honestly, I think that’s all you should know, similar in the way that watching trailers for films can often ruin the entire thing, knowing too much about this game is probably the same.

I will however say that the game is approximately film length (90mins), is appropriate to play in front of non gamers (I played it in front of my gf) and that the game is truly a unique work of art.

At £7 it’s maybe a little bit on the more expensive side, there is no replay value, and is best played in one sitting.

It is, however, 100% worth playing, and I very much recommend it to gamers and non gamers alike. If I was to make a list of top X games experiences, this would be on there for sure.

Go and play it before highlighting the below, which probably contains spoilers

—- SPOILERS —-

Finished?

Wow, right?

What a crazy ride, it’s rare that a video game can really make you stop and think, it’s definitely not an exaggeration to say that this game gave me the full spectrum of emotions, from happy to sad to worried, confused and everything in between. How many video games manage that? Like seriously there are a shitload of ‘fun’ games out there but there are only a very small handful of games that really evoke emotion and make you stop and think.

Like that scene where you are confronted with the machine, or where you back away from the stage, so many really memorable, fantastic moments.

I actually had to look up some theories on what happens at the end, my girlfriend was actually just kind of laying down for most of the game, but as the game started to reach it’s climax i turned around and she was fully upright and leaning in to read, probably a good indicator that the game is doing it’s job.